I’ve been trying not to post too many things recently, but today I had to make an exception, as I have a very special guest post to share with you that I thought both readers and writers would enjoy. The fabulous Georgia Rose tells us about her experience running giveaways, and of course, I asked her to also tell us a bit about her most recent book, Parallel Lies. I leave you in her very capable hands!

Celebrate your new book release by running a #Giveaway – Parallel Lies by Georgia Rose

To celebrate the launch of my latest novel, Parallel Lies, I decided to have a little fun and run a Giveaway via Rafflecopter. I chose Rafflecopter because that was the Giveaway widget thing I’d seen on blogs all over and I’m not sure if there even is anyone else who provides a similar service.

I had been thinking about this Giveaway for some considerable time and had collected items for it for a while. As an example I wasn’t planning on publishing until September but in February, because that is when they are around, I was buying heart shaped chocolates – in fact I could have sworn I also had some heart shaped marshmallows from that time but they don’t seem to have made it into the final prize photo… ahem… moving on…

I continued to look out for suitable additions and bought them as I went along. Notepads decorated with hearts and some really cute thank you cards (avec hearts!) joined the pile. I bought these extras because although I already knew I was going to offer all of my paperbacks I wanted to make the prize as appealing as possible.

Even with all my planning there was a small misjudgement as come photo taking day the paperbacks for Parallel Lies had not arrived but I made do with the kindle version and made it very clear on the entry form that the kindle was NOT included!

Giveaways a go go!

You can run Giveaways for free via Rafflecopter, but your choices on what you want the entrant to do are limited and I wanted to get specific things out of the Giveaway, so there are also various levels of upgrade. After checking with them that a) I could do what I wanted to do when I upgraded, and b) I only needed to upgrade for a month (and finding Rafflecopter incredibly helpful in the process) I went ahead.

By upgrading to the Grow option it meant I could customise the entry requirements because I wanted two things:

To have one of the options to be the purchase of Parallel Lies,

To have one of the options to be for the entrant to sign up to my newsletter.

Other than that I chose the usual, visiting me on Facebook, following me on Twitter and sharing on Twitter options.

Rafflecopter have done a superb job of making the setting up of a Giveaway really easy. They say that it is up front, but you know, people say that all the time and it isn’t necessarily true – however I’m delighted to say, this was.

Adding the prize details, the photo and then the entry requirements was a piece of…, well, very simple and straightforward. You get to choose how many entry points to allot to each entry requirement. I made my main two 5 points each and the others all 1. This, I think, was a mistake and in hindsight I’d have made the buying of Parallel Lies a larger number, as a bigger enticement.

Rafflecopter can also automate the entries that sign up to your newsletter, which is a feature I love, and it means that the email addresses of anyone who does enter this bit get put directly onto your newsletter list with Mailchimp (other email providers are available) and you don’t have to do a thing. Bliss!

You set the dates of when you want the Giveaway to run and deal with the terms and conditions and that’s it. You are given an embed code so that you can put it on your website or in any blog posts. You are shown how to insert it into a Facebook page and you are given a link for if you just want to link it here and there.

The positives that came out of running this were:

I really enjoyed it!

There were a lot of sign-ups to my newsletter, which was tremendous.

There was a lot of interaction on Facebook and the real surprise was the increase in the number of ‘likes’ for my Facebook page as that wasn’t a necessity.

Entrants also did a lot of sharing of the Giveaway on Facebook, which was lovely of them.

I should also add that there were a few people on Facebook who were confused about whether they had entered correctly and another great feature of Rafflecopter is that you can go and look at the entries to check whether someone’s name is on there or not.

The lessons learnt were:

There was a disappointingly low take up of the ‘purchasing my book’ option so it would be interesting to see if increasing the number of points this was worth would improve the numbers willing to take a chance on a new book/new author.

I should maybe have run it over a shorter period of time. It was going for over 3 weeks and I’d lost impetuous in that time in promoting it. It appeared on all the blog posts in the blog tour I had running up to the launch and then there was a bit of a lull before the final push for entries.

I’m sure there must have been others but they escape me at the moment!

Rafflecopter do the whole dipping their hand into the virtual hat brimming with entries at the end so that keeps it all above board and they even announce the winner on the entry form.

Running a Giveaway is an investment in time, prizes, postage etc but you have control over how big or small you want to make those and can tailor what you do accordingly. I was certainly delighted with the results of the one I ran and would definitely do it again. This one was held to celebrate the publication of my fourth novel, Parallel Lies, which is here.

Parallel Lies by Georgia Rose

‘My name is Madeleine, Madeleine Ross. It is a name chosen with thought and because it is classy, and that is what is needed here…’

Madeleine Ross has life exactly as she planned it.

Cosy cottage, friendly village, satisfying job.

Company… when she wants it.

It’s an enviable existence for an independent young woman, and one she’s keen to protect.

Enter Daniel – strong, dependable and a danger to everything she’s built. He’s not something she was looking for, but hearts can’t be controlled and maybe, just maybe he might be worth letting into hers.

But, all is not what it seems. Because Madeleine is hiding a lifetime of secrets. Deep secrets.

And they never stay buried for ever.

Her darkest secret returns, like the proverbial bad penny. He is her first love, shadowy, dangerous, the baddest of bad boys. No matter how far she runs, or how well she hides, she can never escape him.

Or her past.

Here he is, on her doorstep, with a proposition she is powerless to resist but which could devastate the future she hoped to have.

Can Madeleine satisfy the old love while keeping the new?

You can’t always get what you want but, desperate to preserve the life she has worked so hard for, Madeleine is willing to risk everything to prove that she can.

I was born in Barcelona and have lived in the UK for many years now. I'm a writer, translator (English-Spanish and vice-versa) and I'm a medical doctor and worked in Forensic Psychiatry many years. I also have a BA and a PhD in American Literature and Film, and a Masters in Criminology. I've always loved books and apart from writing them I review them often.
I write a bit of everything, check my books for more information and my about page for links.
My blog is bilingual, English and Spanish.

Thanks, Georgia. It was a pleasure. Any time. I knew other authors would be very interested in your personal experience. I’m not a great organiser and so far have only taken part in joint giveaways so I was eager to learn more.

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This is me!

I'm a writer, translator (English-Spanish and vice versa) and a forensic psychiatrist. I was born in Barcelona and moved to the UK in 1992 to train in psychiatry. After a few years I decided to go back to full-time education and completed a BA in American Literature at Sussex University (it included a year in Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts), and a PhD on 'the Films of David Mamet'. As I never tired studying I also did an MSc (Distance Learning) in Criminology and Criminal Justice (Leicester University). Now I've decided to try and focus on writing, translating and exploring interesting stuff.
I have written short stories, several novels including different genres and two series (one YA, one psychological thriller). I also review books and I am a member of several review groups. You can find more information about my writing following the links.
If you're an author who, like me, wants to reach more potential readers, talk to me about translations. I know how important it is to be in control and I understand how much you care about your books. Let's talk about it. I am in most places but for more information check:
My website/blog:
http://www.authortranslatorolga.com
And for older content:
http://OlgaNM.wordpress.com

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